Slocum and the Devil's Rope

by Jake Logan

  “Higher ground that way,” Slocum said, finding the part of the countryside that afforded the only sanctuary in a really heavy downpour. “Let’s start moving the beeves.”

  Jonesy rode off, grumbling to himself. Slocum went the other direction and convinced the cowboys to do more than get out their yellow slickers.

  “Is it gonna be bad, Slocum?” Tom Garvin looked a tad frightened. “I don’t like storms. They always scared me when I was a kid.”

  Slocum refrained from asking how many weeks ago that was. If anything, he wanted Garvin to shut up rather than ramble on.

  “Got so bad I hid under my bed sometimes. Me and my dog. Ole Ben ran out into the rain and got struck by lightning.” Garvin shuddered. “Still remember the smell.”

  “There’ll be cooking beef if we don’t get the herd settled down.”

  “That’s kinda hard with all this noise.” Garvin’s words were almost drowned out by a heavy clap of thunder. The storm moved closer fast.

  In less than ten minutes the rain fell so hard and heavy Slocum could barely see a dozen yards in front of him. He hoped Jonesy and the rest of the crew were doing their part to keep the herd moving because the ground turned spongy and then muddy. Not far to his left a bank of an existing ravine fell in as water rushed down it. There might not be an inch of rainfall in an hour, but when the entire prairie funneled the downpour into a few rivers, riding became dangerous.

  Slocum used his rope to swat the rump of a steer to keep it moving where he thought uphill might be. The rain hit the ground so hard now droplets danced back a good six inches. When the dirt turned entirely to mud, the land began flowing. Using that downward direction as a guide, Slocum kept the cattle moving opposite.

  It was hard to tell if he had reached the dubious summit of the small hill. Riding around the edge of the herd helped keep the cattle bunched together. They naturally sought one another for protection against the driving rain, making his job a little easier. Some went down to the ground while others crowded above them. By the time he had completed a circuit, he found Jonesy.

  “Slocum, if ever I doubt you ag’in, you kin jist whomp me in the head to knock some sense back in. This is turnin’ into a real storm.”

  “We need to keep the herd bedded down. I don’t think they’ll try to run because of the thunder, but they’re dumb as dirt.”

  “It’s gonna be a long night if the storm hangs on like it’s lookin’ to,” Jonesy said. He scowled and asked, “How long ’til sundown anyway? It’s darker than a coal miner’s soul right now, and it cain’t be past two.”

  “That’s about right,” Slocum said, not taking his watch out to check. It didn’t matter what the time was. All that counted was riding out the storm.

  “You see Garvin?”

  “No,” Slocum said. “Can’t say I was looking for him, though.”

  “If anybody’s gonna git into trouble, my money’s on him. I didn’t see hide nor hair of him. Did everybody else? Want me to find him?”

  “You go one way around the herd, I’ll go the other. We can meet up on the far side.”

  Slocum took better than twenty minutes to see Jonesy riding stolidly through the rain. From the set to the cowboy’s shoulders, he knew he hadn’t found Tom Garvin either.

  “Where do you suppose he got off to?” Jonesy asked.

  Slocum backtracked mentally on how they had formed the herd and gotten it moving to the rapidly eroding knoll. In spite of the mudflows, this was the safest spot he had found for the herd to stay. Lower areas would erode even faster as rain ran downhill into the flooded gullies.

  “He might have gotten on the wrong path a half mile back,” Slocum said. “The ravine was shallow, but the water flowed fast.”

  “Cain’t wade through even a shallow one,” Jonesy said. “I got my feet knocked from under me with only an inch of flowin’ water on my first drive. The others in the crew laughed themselves sick. Never let me fergit.”

  “He might be stranded on the far side of the ravine by now,” Slocum said.

  “Then he ain’t in no danger.”

  They looked at each other through a wet curtain. Jonesy snorted in disgust.

  “Want me to hunt fer him?”

  “I’ll go. I feel responsible,” Slocum said.

  “You might have to wait ’til the rain’s over to even find us again. A man kin git lost mighty quick in a torrential rain like this.”

  “If I’m not back when the storm lets up, keep moving toward town. We can’t be more than ten or fifteen miles away.”

  “A day, maybe two.”

  “A day,” Slocum said positively.

  “You don’t show up, I ain’t holdin’ back on my drinkin’ and whorin’.”

  “Start the celebration without me. But I’ll be there. We’ll be there.”

  Jonesy spat and waved Slocum off as if he was shooing away a buzzing fly. Turning his reluctant horse downhill, he slipped and slid in the rivulets of mud and came to a level patch. Slocum could only guess direction since the trail was nothing but sticky mud now. Any track of a hoofprint had long since been erased.

  He pulled his hat down a little more to shield his eyes and pressed on in the rain. Not being able to see more than a few yards made him wonder if this was a fool’s errand. Garvin would be fine if he simply found a high spot and settled down until the storm passed. That was the sensible thing.

  That gnawed at Slocum. It was the sensible thing. He wasn’t sure he had seen much that was sensible out of the tenderfoot. If anything, Garvin grew increasingly irresponsible as he thought his experience made him into a seasoned cowboy.

  Slocum yanked back on the reins, bringing his horse to a sudden halt. The horse tried to toss its head in protest of the bit cutting so hard into his mouth, but Slocum didn’t want to move an inch farther. The ravine he had seen—one hardly three feet across—now spanned more than five feet and was filled with roiling, muddy water. The current was so fast no man could ride across without being swept away.

  He peered through the rain and murk and saw a flash of silver against black. Garvin’s damned rope.

  “Can you get across the water?” Slocum shouted. Garvin jerked about and looked up.

  “The ground’s meltin’ out from under me!”

  “The rain’s coming down even harder. You aren’t safe there.”

  The small island of dirt was eroding visibly as the storm-fed river rose and boiled about. Garvin would be sucked into the maelstrom in a few minutes unless he did something.

  “I can’t go anywhere, Slocum. I was cut off.”

  Slocum wondered what the hell Garvin had been up to, but this was no time to ask such questions. For two cents he would leave him to his fate, but he felt responsible. Garvin was his own man, and increasingly so, but Slocum had taken him under his wing. Letting him die wasn’t going to happen. He would do all he could to save any of the other trail hands, even if they weren’t likely to wander off in a fierce storm.

  If Garvin tried riding his horse across the increasingly deep river, he and the horse would be swept away. Slocum took a deep breath. The young cowboy’s only chance was to abandon his gear and try to cross the raging river without his horse.

  “Can you throw me the end of your rope? You need to use it to cross the water.”

  “Leave my horse? I can’t do that!”

  “You’re going to die if you don’t.” Slocum took his own rope, played out a small loop, then began spinning it over his head. He let it fly. The storm wind caught the rope and lifted it.

  Then it fell feet short of reaching Garvin.

  Slocum stepped closer and cast the rope again. Again the rope flew straight and true—and inches short. Before he could step even closer to make up the last few inches, the bank began turning to sludge under his boots,
forcing him to step away. There was no hope at all of throwing the rope to Garvin to rescue him.

  “My rope’s too short,” Slocum called. He wiped water from his face. The sheets of blowing rain parted for a moment, giving him a good view of Garvin. The island where he stood had been cut down to a space hardly three feet across.

  “My rope’s longer,” Garvin said. “Isn’t there a way to save my horse? I can ride it—”

  The anguished screech of the horse blotted out his words. The ground had been cut from under the horse’s hooves, catapulting it into a turbulent stream. Its head bobbed above the murky brown surface, then it vanished. All cries were drowned out by the sound of the water—and by drowning.

  “Throw your rope,” Slocum shouted. He had no faith that the black rope would be long enough, but it was Garvin’s only hope.

  Tom Garvin spun the rope over his head and then loosed it. As Slocum’s had, it lofted, was caught by the wind, and brought across the river. It fell feet short, too.

  Before Slocum could sign Garvin’s death warrant by telling him to try swimming across, the cowboy pulled back the rope and coiled it for another try. This time it seemed to stretch, to grow longer. The silver threads chasing the length blazed as lightning lashed the sky. And the rope fell at Slocum’s feet.

  He stamped down hard and pressed the end of the rope into the ground to keep it from being pulled back toward the river by the gusty wind. Slocum dropped to his knee and grabbed the rope. It felt hot in his hands. He sat, dug in his feet, and knew he could never give a strong enough anchor for Garvin to get across.

  Slocum looked around for something to fasten the end of the rope. A jagged rock had been washed up out of the ground.

  “Let me fasten the rope. I can’t hold it by myself.” He stretched the rope as taut as he could, got it looped around the rock. He kicked a couple times to be sure the rock was securely embedded.

  Slocum cinched the rope down, braced his feet so he could tug and pull Garvin across.

  “Jump!”

  Slocum wiped rain from his eyes and saw that Garvin had no choice. The river had completely eaten away his small island of safety. The cowboy splashed into the river. The sudden jerk on the rope unbalanced Slocum. He braced his foot against the rock and began pulling on the rope. The loop was like a poor pulley, but Slocum put his back to the effort.

  Inch by inch he pulled Garvin closer to the safety of the riverbank.

  “I’m almost there, Slocum. Almost there!”

  Slocum pulled harder and then slammed flat on his back as the rock came free of the ground. The rock landed atop him, and he lost his grip on the rope.

  Tom Garvin was swept away in the flood-swollen river.

  14

  Slocum stared at his rope-burned hands and then through the downpour into the river. The way it churned prevented him from getting any idea where Tom Garvin might have gone. Being swept away in that millrace wasn’t the worst way to die, Slocum supposed. Garvin would probably have his head smashed against a rock and drown pretty fast. There was no way anyone could possibly fight the current. With the ravine being cut ever deeper by the flash flood, no chance existed for Garvin to be washed onto a bank.

  Slocum wiped water from his face, then backed from the river as another couple feet of once-solid ground collapsed and became part of the deadly current. The mud made it impossible to see down into the water. There was a small chance Garvin might have caught on a root sticking out into the river as the water eroded dirt around trees and bushes.

  He backed off another foot when a larger section of the land simply sank, a small eddy pool forming in front of him. Despair filled him at the loss. He had liked Garvin at first, then had come to feel some rancor toward him as his arrogance grew. He was sorry to see a life snuffed out so fast, no matter how he’d ended up thinking of the young man.

  Mounting, Slocum rode slowly along the riverbank, trying to get his bearings to return to the herd. Jonesy was a competent drover and would have everything under control, but Slocum felt the increasing need to be done with the drive.

  Mostly he wanted to get the herd to market, then return to the Bar M and talk with Christine. Everything from the trail drive had convinced him even more that settling down was a good idea, but he needed to know where he stood with her. Mordecai Magnuson pushed her toward the neighboring rancher’s son. That made economic sense. A spread twice the size of the Bar M had a better chance of surviving. Slocum had seen bad times and good. The Panic of ’73 had driven too many ranchers into bankruptcy. The survivors were the larger ranches.

  The Bar M with the Norton ranch would be the largest in the area and control prices for the beeves. It made financial sense for Christine to marry Josh Junior.

  It made no sense at all to Slocum if she found the younger rancher as obnoxious as she claimed. The memory of her with Norton at the square dance still burned in his brain, though. They hadn’t danced as if she found him all that disagreeable, though she might have been on her best behavior because both her pa and Norton were there watching. Better to pretend than to cause a scene. Away from the crowd it might be different.

  It had to be different. Slocum’s intentions toward her were nothing but honorable.

  With a strong hand on the reins to replace Jed Blassingame, Slocum could double the profitability of the Bar M. That had to appeal to Magnuson if his only reason of marrying Christine off was to enhance his income.

  The tree in his path caused Slocum to jerk back on the reins. His thoughts had been miles away, and the heavy rain was only now letting up a mite to allow him to see more than a few yards ahead. The wind and rain had stripped most of the leaves off the tree, but the way it bent showed it wasn’t dead.

  He stared at it, something bothering him. Why did it bend almost double—and against the wind? It should have bent with the wind.

  Returning to the herd prodded him to ignore this small mystery, but curiosity had always been his bane. Slocum rode closer and saw that something had tangled in the upper limbs. From the vibration, whatever was caught surged and ebbed with the water running in the river.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. A distant flash of lighting illuminated the tree—and the black rope with silver threads wrapped around the upper limbs. The taut rope stretched downward at an angle into the river.

  Slocum dismounted and ran to the tree. Arms around the sturdy trunk, he peered over the embankment into the raging water. The swift stream had washed away dirt around half the tree’s roots. They flopped about like weird wooden brown fingers, but in the middle of the tangle he saw the top of Tom Garvin’s head.

  The cowboy clung to his rope with a fierce tenacity that had undoubtedly saved his life. How he had roped the upper part of the tree while being swept along wasn’t something Slocum could figure out. Better to ask Garvin straight out.

  Slocum flopped onto his belly and reached out.

  “Garvin! You alive? Grab hold. I’ll pull you up.”

  A dirty, strained face lifted. Garvin blinked muddy water from his eyes and tried to speak. He choked on a mouthful of river. Spitting it out, he put his head down and pulled hard on the rope. Slocum caught the rope and tried to pull him up. The rope felt as if it were on fire.

  He released it, thinking he had too badly burned his hands earlier for this to be a way to save Garvin. Slocum scooted perilously close to the embankment, feeling it yielding under his chest. Slocum hooked his toes around an exposed root and strained to reach down to the surface of the river. As Garvin bobbed up, Slocum caught his wrist and yanked with all his strength. Muscles in his belly protested the load and his knees sank into the soft earth.

  But the cowboy shot upward out of the water and crashed down against the tangle of exposed roots. Garvin instinctively wrapped his arms around the wood until Slocum could give another solid pull. Rolling onto his back,
Slocum almost threw Garvin onto more solid ground.

  The cowboy clung to his black rope as if his life depended on it. Slocum looked upward and knew that Garvin’s life had depended on that rope. Without it being looped around the upper tree limbs, he would have been swept away and drowned.

  “You all right? Or as good as you can be after almost getting yourself drowned like a rat?”

  Garvin sputtered and spat water, then retched. When the spasm passed, he used the rope to pull himself up to a sitting position under the tree. Blinking hard, he finally focused on Slocum.

  “Didn’t expect to see you ag’in, Slocum.”

  “That makes two of us. Come on, can you stand?” Slocum got his arms around the man’s shoulders and pulled him to his feet.

  Garvin sagged, and Slocum had to strain to support even his slight weight. It surprised him how weak he felt. Pulling Garvin from the river had taken more out of him than he’d thought possible.

  “Walk. Get your feet moving.”

  “I’m doin’ fine. Let me be.”

  Slocum backed off, watching closely, and decided Garvin was right. For a man battered by the water and smashed into the sides of the ravine for a couple miles, he was in good shape. Garvin tugged on the rope and used it to support himself until he could send a wave sailing upward. Slocum jumped back when the black rope came free with only this small twitch of Garvin’s wrist.

  “How did that hold you? It wasn’t even looped around the tree, was it?”

  “Saved me, Slocum. It damned well saved me.” Garvin clutched the rope to his chest like a lover and cooed to it.

  “We’ll have to ride double,” Slocum said, unnerved by Garvin’s actions.

  Garvin coiled his rope and, by the time Slocum had stepped up into the saddle, was ready to swing up behind. He held the rope in one hand and circled Slocum’s waist with the other. Sagging, he almost fell off the horse but caught himself in time.